WINDMILL

New york Times February 22, 2001

On Energy Farms, Technology Milks the Wind

By MATT LAKE

THE windmill is a centuries-old technology originally developed to pump water and grind grain, but it could play an important role in solving two serious problems facing the United States: generating an adequate supply of electricity and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.

Wind turbines have been used for generating electricity for more than a century, beginning with experiments by a Danish meteorologist, Poul la Cour, in the 1890's and his founding of the Society of Wind Electricians in 1905.

Despite refinements in the 20th century, development did not begin in earnest until the oil crisis in the 1970's made the electricity supply expensive and less reliable. The 1970's and 1980's saw a proliferation of turbine designs, ranging from two- and three-propeller horizontal generator designs to a vertical model that resembled an eggbeater. But this country's nascent wind generation industry got a bad rap in the 1980's when investments in wind generators failed because of cheap electricity from fossil and nuclear fuels and the inefficient design of some turbines.

Wind turbines have now become much more efficient, thanks in large part to the Danish windmill industry. Now dozens of manufacturers are cranking out turbine models, from small designs, each aimed at providing power for a single house, to huge machines with 100- foot blades that can supply between two and three million kilowatt-hours in a year, enough to power at least 500 households. California, which has the most developed wind-power industry of any state, has more than 15,000 turbines creating enough energy for about a million people. And in the late 1990's, Enron Wind, a wind-turbine developer based in California, installed the three largest wind-generation plants in the world in the American Midwest: two plants, each producing more than a hundred megawatts, in Lake Benton, Minn., and a 193-megawatt plant in Storm Lake, Iowa.

The impetus for generating clean power is being spurred by efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Currently, two-thirds of the electricity in the United States is generated by burning fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil. Such combustion pumped 2,245 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 1999, according to the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. That was an increase of 1.35 percent over the previous year.

The more power produced by wind, the less need be produced by burning fossil fuels. But wind turbines remain a relatively untapped resource. Wind currently contributes three billion kilowatt-hours annually, less than 1 percent of the national supply.

Wind power has a few benefits over more common ways to generate electricity. Wind "farms," with dozens or even hundreds of turbines, can be built cheaply and quickly, and they can be easily expanded. Their operational costs are not subject to fuel prices, and the cost per kilowatt-hour is comparable to the cost for plants burning fossil fuels.

A disadvantage of wind power is its unreliability. Although wind farms are situated to take advantage of strong prevailing winds, variations in wind speed cause unpredictable fluctuations in the capacity of a wind turbine. Even the most efficient design fails to capture 40 percent of the energy in the wind. But since it's "free" energy, failing to tap it all is not such a big problem.

Despite the advantages of wind generation, it has a large number of earnest opponents. Some people just do not want to have wind turbines nearby. The turbines are huge structures that are visible from great distances because they need unobstructed access to air currents. So many zoning boards and prospective residents say they are eyesores that contribute to visual blight.

The large structures also require deep concrete foundations, and that heavy construction has its own impact on rural settings. Such excavation leads to local air pollution and the risk of erosion at the sites and their access roads. And wind farms gobble up territory, taking up considerably more land than other electrical generators to generate a comparable amount of electricity.

Many older models drew opposition because they were noisy, but newer designs are quieter. The wind generation industry says modern turbines are no louder than refrigerators when heard from the distance that most turbines are placed from populated areas.

There is also controversy over the impact of wind turbines on the environment, especially bird life, because raptors like golden eagles are drawn to prey sheltering near the turbines and can be killed by the spinning blades. The Sierra Club, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Audubon Society all recognize bird mortality as a significant problem with wind generators.

The Department of Energy's goal is to increase the contribution of wind power to electricity generation nationwide to 5 percent by 2020, and that may be within reach. The department has plans on file from several power companies that want to build large-scale wind farms between now and 2019 in Texas, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Minnesota, with smaller plants in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and upstate New York, near Watertown.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), February 24, 2001

Answers

Just a gut feeling---this will never be a significant source of electic power.

-- (NIMBY@wind.farm), February 24, 2001.

NIMBY--right, Dick Cheney will block it.

-- (LeonTrotsky@power_to_the.people), February 24, 2001.

Shoot, Lars,

I'm around long enough to perhaps muddy the waters [ or raise some blood pressure].

http://www.public-policy.org/~ncpa/studies/renew/renew2d.html

As a quick note, the red-tailed hawk is the main bird of prey in North America that is responsible for keeping rodent populations in check.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,330919,00.html

{I have no idea who the outfit below is, sorry}:

http://www.hern.org/~arrowood/html/2renewable_energy__not_cheap_n.htm

-- flora (***@__._), February 24, 2001.

I'd like to see wind generation up to 20% by 2020. It has great potential, though fuel plants have to stay ready in case of no wind. Its like me and my wood stove; the furnace stays off as long as I have a fire.

It was posted a few weeks ago that windmill companies were paying farmers $2000.00 per machine for lease rights on their land. That's often more than they'd get from growing a crop. Rural land leasing should not be a problem.

I'd like to see a wind map of the country that would show uninhabited locations for instaallations.

-- John Littmann (littmannj@aol.com), February 24, 2001.

Ok, who here has been to a working wind farm? Do you ever remember waking-up with a hang-over in your mispent youth? Head pounding. Yep, that is part of the experience. Do you remember dropping the Christmas bird into the food processor to make turkey salad? Another part of the experience. Dead sliced and diced birds over your ankles.

Proponents say that the newer designs don't have these problems. What would you expect proponents to say? Will wait and see.

Cheers,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), February 24, 2001.

People, you can't get something for nothing. Wind energy is not "free". I'm not talking about dead birds. I'm talking about extracting so much energy from the air that the weather itself would be affected.

Advanced models developed at Iceland Polyteknik show show that massive deployment of wind generators would result in global-cooling due to the reduction of energy in dynamic weather systems.

So sad.

-- (Paracelsus@Pb.Au), February 24, 2001.

I'm with NIMBY. Biggest problem is that, absent nuclear, alternatives to fossil energy consume more energy to produce and maintain during their lifetimes than they produce themselves. Bummer.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), February 24, 2001.

Carlos:

Biggest problem is that, absent nuclear, alternatives to fossil energy consume more energy to produce and maintain during their lifetimes than they produce themselves.

The data that I have seen supports that view [you did forget geothermal]. Still, you must add the environmental cost. We will see, since BPA is going to build an enormous wind farm in south-central Washington.

Cheers,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), February 24, 2001.

On the aspect of wind generation, there is a lot of potential energy there, just don't get carried away with your expectations. Here in NZ we have a few wind generators. They are mainly small ones which serve particular purposes and they do give an idea of what to expect from a wind farm.

A very good fiend of mine installed a 1kVA wind generator to supply a pump shed. The turbine is on a windy knob about 110m from the shed. From that 1kVA generator he achieves a 25% load factor, (or an average output of 250W). If you consider that an average house would use an average of 1.5 kW, with a peak demand approaching 15kW then for each house relying on wind generation the required turbine would need to be at least 6 times larger than the one installed for the pump shed. Knowing the size and noise associated with the 1kVA generator, then a house sized one would be 15 m tall, have a 6 m diameter arc, and would sound like a continous wave crashing.

How many houses in USA are there? Wind is appropriate as a supplement to other forms of energy, if the wind farm can be located in a windy location well away from populated areas, or areas of natural conservation. They are suited for sparse farm land where grazing animals can feed around them, as long as the farmer is prepared for a lower return from his animals.

Carlos and Z,

I think that you have both forgotten the one form of renewable energy that does not consume more than it produces - HYDRO. I know that all hydro plant does cause changes to the ecology, particularly to fish migration, however modern fish passes have overcome that particular issue. Where the river channels have been changed from fast flowing streams to lakes, the ecology adapts and a new environment soon takes over. It is not better or worse, just different.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), February 26, 2001.